


Never run, never hide

by Dark_K



Series: Fight 'till the end [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, F/M, Fluff, Fluffy fluff stuff from flufferstown, Happy, Happy Derek, Happy Stiles, M/M, happy everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 00:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_K/pseuds/Dark_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek decides to leave the moment he realizes he has no place in Scott’s pack.</p><p>No, that’s a lie — he decides to leave before that: he leaves when he realizes that Beacon Hills can’t hold him anymore. The town is poison to him, and he doesn’t have any obligation to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never run, never hide

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the second part!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy it <3

**Never run, never hide**

Derek decides to leave the moment he realizes he has no place in Scott’s pack.

No, that’s a lie — he decides to leave before that: he leaves when he realizes that Beacon Hills can’t hold him anymore. The town is poison to him, and he doesn’t have any obligation to stay.

So he goes when Braeden calls, he goes when he could have stayed, and he hurts a lot of people by doing so, even though they don’t call him out on it.

He goes to hunt down the Desert Wolf with Braeden, and loses himself in it for a few weeks, until he realizes he traded one prison for the other — this is not _his_ quest, it’s hers.

He leaves again — and Braeden promises him it’s not running, it’s not hiding, it’s finding himself, and he accepts that.

He also accepts he might need therapy.

**X**

He goes to therapy.

He starts out intense, going once every two days to a nice little old lady, who helps him out more than he could think possible, because even though he’s a full wolf, and even though he talked to his mother, he still has a lot of issues to work through.

It’s not easy admitting to the guilt he feels, and it’s even harder to start letting it go — the therapist suggests he should do something to _help_ the people he wants to help, but that he shouldn’t tie himself down to the town that always hurts him in the process. You can still help people and not hurt yourself for it (and isn’t that a lesson he should have learned sooner?).

He soul-searches a lot those days. Talks to Braeden on the phone to know she’s okay.

He thinks about who he should really try to help — Scott clearly doesn’t _need_ his help, and he’s not really sure he wants to help him anyway. He thinks of all the people he’s hurt, and he thinks of the ones who were _always there_ , and he can only think of one name: Stiles.

**X**

He thinks of the Nemeton when he thinks of Stiles. He knows they faced more problems after that, but he also knows that the death of Allison Argent is never going to leave Stiles, and that he is the one who suffers the most out of all of them, because he suffers for them all. He always feels responsible, and he always feels that he has to help — it’s about time someone help him back.

He looks into things, and Braeden helps him some, until she tells him she’s going back to Beacon Hills because his cousin called her for help — Derek gets it, it’s _her_ mission, and now he has one of his own: heal, and help healing someone else while he’s at it.

The idea that the Nemeton works on sacrifices isn’t hard to grasp, and he chooses a night when no one is around it anymore to go back into town to do the ritual — the ground around the old tree is walked on and disturbed, and he shivers as he sets his mother’s claws in the center of it, feeling all the evil surrounding it, but also that his sacrifice is accepted.

He’s not sure _what_ will come of it, but he knows for sure that it’ll help Stiles, and that’s all that matters.

Derek turns around, walks away. Leaves a letter for Deaton and hopes for the best. Catches a plane to Paris the next morning, without once thinking of _what_ he brought back to help Stiles, but whatever it is, he knows it’ll be good.

**X**

When he finds Isaac, he apologizes first, and asks for nothing in return. He apologizes for not being completely truthful to him when he turned him, and for being a terrible Alpha when Isaac was his Beta. Apologizes for hurting him, and leaving him behind, and never believing in himself enough to actually believe in other people.

Isaac listens, nods sometimes, but doesn’t say anything in return.

Derek sticks around Paris for a week. By the sixth day, Isaac comes to him, eyes wide and scared as he shows him a picture on his phone.

_Back from France!_ reads the caption on a photo of Allison with Stiles. Derek blinks back tears, knowing he helped, that he did that, and for the first time in a long, long while, he feels as if he’s done something truly _good_ with nothing terrible to follow.

Isaac stares at him and asks how he did it. Derek shakes his head and tells him his mother helped him. His former Beta is still staring at him — now not with mistrust, or fear, or anger, but contemplating everything Derek has told him a week ago under new light.

On the picture, Allison and Stiles have their arms around each other, smiling away like nothing’s wrong in the world, and Derek feels as if he could do anything at all.

When he comes back to the US a week later, Isaac comes with him.

**X**

They settle for New Haven because it’s not a huge city, but also not a tiny town.

Neither of them talk about the fact that they know Stiles got into Yale, and that Allison might come with him, if their Facebook feed is anything to go by — Isaac has them both on his friends’ list, but he never talks, never likes any pictures, never comments on any status, he just watches.

When Derek tries to ask him why, he just shrugs and tells him he has had time to think things through, he’s had time to find his center, his anchor, and let go of most of his issues for a while now. Allison and Stiles should be able to do that themselves, away from the past, and Isaac is _in_ their past.

Derek still goes to therapy, Isaac starts seeing a professional too. The ex-Alpha uses his insurance money to open up a small coffee shop with a tiny bookstore attached, and half of it is on Isaac’s name.

They work, they go home, make some casual friends, and feel like they have a tiny little pack of two to call their own.

From afar, through pictures and statuses, they learn that Scott is going to Beacon Hills Community College, and Lydia is headed to CalTech.

They also learn that Stiles and Allison are taking one year off to travel around the world, and Isaac smiles wide when he reads that — not that Derek is far behind. They are healing, bit by bit, day by day. They have bad days and good days, and days when they don’t want to see anyone, but they are working through it, and getting better every second.

They are just too happy to know that Allison and Stiles are taking a different route, a longer one, but are doing it too.

**X**

They have a routine, and it’s a good one — they don’t feel the need for a lot of excitement in their lives: a good new book, more clients than usual, a nice new movie to watch, that is excitement enough for the two of them, but when Derek hears their voices, oh when he hears their voices his heart races and he and Isaac stare at each other wondering if this is it, if they are finally here.

They are.

Allison looks good with her hair longer again, warm clothes keeping the cold air out, all flushed cheeks and dimples.

Stiles looks like he doesn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, and it’s the first time Derek has seen him look like that outside of a picture ever since they met.

Allison is the first one to notice Isaac, and she smells happy and excited, and Stiles looks startled and confused, and then Derek can’t help himself. He has to say something.

“I knew you’d find us eventually,” he says, and Stiles turns, and it’s like a punch to the stomach, seeing him this up-close, right in front of him, brown eyes wide, and scent content and happy — none of the bitter taste of fear, of the pungent stink of depression. His scent is sweet and heady, happy. That’s all there is to it: he’s happy.

Derek hugs him because he’s wanted to do that for a long time now, but couldn’t, or didn’t feel he had the right to, but now he sees no reason not to — he can. He’s earned this: Stiles’ wellbeing, his friendship, maybe. To have this person who always helps everyone else in his life too.

Maybe even keep him around.

**X**

Stiles and Allison are frequent visitors of the bookshop and coffee shop. They come around when classes end, sometimes before they start. They study on the tables, and have a small corner all their own where Isaac brings them drinks on the house, and Derek stops by often to talk about some new book, or some hard class.

They go out together a few times. They have dinner at Derek’s once or twice — Allison and Stiles cook them food they’ve learned how to make on their trip, and share stories about being away, seeing the world.

They share some other stories too — about coming to terms with the fact that they aren’t responsible for anyone else’s life but their own. About how hard it is to be away from everything they had known, but how happy it makes them, this _unknown_ new world they are finding out on their own.

For a few days, Derek is actually thinking that maybe they are going to get together, the two of them. Maybe they’d be good for each other, maybe they are _right_ in a way that Scott and Allison never really felt — and then, one night, Stiles shows up at his door with everything he could possibly need to make him pasta, waltzing into his apartment like he did on his life, taking over the kitchen, and babbling about Allison and Isaac’s date that night.

Something loosens up in his chest then, this certainty that Stiles and Allison aren’t _like that_ — they are _friends_ , in a way that Derek can barely understand, but they aren’t a couple, could never be.

He smiles at Stiles, who has a knowing look in his eyes but still blushes and looks down and away, going on with his cooking as Derek opens a bottle of wine.

They eat, they talk, they sit side by side on the couch and watch something silly on the TV, and Stiles finally turns to him, head tilted to the side curiously, licking his lips before speaking.

“Why me?” he asks, and it could mean a million different things, but Derek knows it’s why him: why help him.

And Derek could give him a thousand different answers — because in between saving each other’s lives and realizing that Stiles was the only who had never lied to him, he learned how to trust again and he owed that to Stiles, and Stiles alone. He could tell him that he liked him. Could tell him that from stolen glances at Facebook photos and learning to love his voice, he had fallen, little by little, in love with this new person Stiles had become, and was still turning into, and that he wants to know what the final result will be, or find out if he’ll always be changing, forever evolving, and taking Derek along for the ride, but none of those would be truthful, because when he did it, when he helped Stiles, he had only had one single thought in mind.

“Because helping you meant helping everyone you’d ever helped, and everyone you will help down the line,” he starts, small smile on his lips as he raises his hand to touch Stiles’ face, running his thumb on his cheek, because he has a feeling he _can,_ “And so I might as well be helping the whole world.”

Stiles snorts, but he smiles and leans in, just a tiny little bit, with Derek closing the distance between them.

The first of thousands more kisses to come.

Because they can.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is it for now? I might add small bits about Stiles and Allison's travels, or about their lives, but I'll consider this one done for now.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading it, and especially for those of you who took the time to comment on it - it means the world to me <3 <3
> 
> [Come tell me what you think of it.](http://darkjan.tumblr.com/)


End file.
